The headache in Queens begins before this year’s Lunar New Year’s party.
For the fifth year in a row, the MTA has scheduled service interruptions for the 7-line trains — the only line that runs through Flushing — during the most significant Asian holiday of the year.
Business owners and their customers are fuming because the track work means people won’t be able to travel by subway from Manhattan to the heart of Queens’ Chinatown to ring in the Year of the Snake.
“It’s unacceptable,” said Dian Yu, executive director of the Flushing Business Improvement District. “About 18 percent of the business [we] do in a year comes in the Lunar New Year month.”
“It’s like Black Friday for the Asian community,” said Timothy Chuang, who owns a restaurant and two health-food stores in Flushing.
This year’s interruption begins Feb. 1 and continues through the middle of the month. The Lunar New Year lands Feb. 10, but the festivities surrounding it begin a week before and continue a week after.
This year, the 7 won’t be running between Times Square and Queensboro Plaza, and Flushing-bound express service will end early.
The MTA said it’s too late to put a stop to 7 train track work this year, but the agency has already agreed not to schedule work during the 2014 Lunar New Year parade. The agency wouldn’t make similar commitments for the weekends before or after, though.
“If it’s possible to avoid a weekend shutdown during the Lunar New Year we want to do that,” MTA spokesman Adam Lisberg said.